Thoughts of Dan of Toasters

it's been a long time....

2007-12-09T01:25:47Z

Wow.. The last entry I made was the story of how I proposed to my wife.. We ended up getting married shortly thereafter and have been happily so for over a year now.

In origami news, there really hasn't been much to speak of.. I started working on updated photos for the Origamic Chemestry section but stalled out halfway through that. I have big plans for DVDs but haven't had the time to pursue those plans either.. Family and work take up a huge chunk of my time and so other interests get put on the back burner so to speak, but no worries, DofTNet isn't going anywhere any time soon.

DofTNet's servers were actually moved back in February. Back in late November last year (200.. what? 6? yeah.. 2006), the owners of the building that I kept my servers in decided to turn off the network connection because they needed to get in touch with us but apparently lost all of our contact information.. I decided that was a good time to up and move my servers to a more friendly location. After working with Comcast for TWO MONTHS, I was finally able to get my servers moved to my home where they have been happily humming along ever since.

The last couple of weeks have been crazy.. crazy good, but still crazy. My wife and I found out that we are now expecting just under two weeks ago. If that wasn't enough good news, I got suddenly and unexpectedly promoted a week ago and have been doing paperwork all week... well not all week. I've been flown out to California and will probably be here for several days.. Some stuff out here they want me to work on, evidently. The leaving my family for a while isn't so much fun (I miss them, after all!) but it's definitely a good thing in the long run.

Ah well.. I'm looking forward to my real vacation - the one with my family - that we had already planned.. some time to unwind from all this new stuff will be welcomed with a big sigh of relief..

Well now I've done it...

2006-08-17T03:52:10Z

I had planned on taking my sweetheart to a fancy restaurant and the whole bit, but life has a funny way of changing your plans for you. Such was the case last night when her 2 year old daughter, came down with a 103 degree fever. We scrapped all plans for the evening so that I could watch her son while she took the little one to the doctor. The kids' health is certainly more important than any dinner plans I might have made so . She finally returned home with her daughter at around 9. She had dropped off a prescription at Walgreens and came home to get the kids in bed and finally get some dinner. I left about an hour after she got back to go pick up the medicine and some food. Not the fancy dinner out that I had planned on, but Sonic.. burgers, onion rings, and sodas. Only I realized after I was almost there that I had left my wallet at her house so I had to turn around and go back to get my wallet. I finally got back to her house with food and medicine at about 11pm..

After we had mostly finished eating (while we were sitting at our computers, of course), I went over and knelt down by her chair and said
"I got this ring for you" and presented to her a nice shiny golden.... onion ring. She looked at me funny, knowing full well what I was actually doing and just shook her head and said...."noooooo"

I said "no? Well I suppose this one will have to do" and I pulled out the fuzzy red box and opened it up to reveal the ring that I really wanted to give her.

She said "What's this for?" knowing, of course, exactly what it was for.

I did it. I asked her to marry me.

She said yes :)

Coming Soon to a DofTNet Near You

2006-05-31T15:21:20Z

Well now I've done it.

I finally broke down and got a decent camera. My old digital camera broke a couple of years ago.. it still turns on and whatnot, but has a hard time dealing with the memory cards.. like it recognizes them but doesn't want to actually use them... in any case, for a while, I've been using a camera I borrowed and more recently (as can be seen in my Origamic Chemistry instructions) I've been using my cellphone's dreadful camera.

The new camera arrived a couple of weeks ago and I've had some time to play around with it and I'm quite happy with it. It is the JVC Everio GZ-MG77 hard disk camcorder that can take DVD resolution videos and and 2 megapixel still images.

This means two things will happen sometime in the foreseeable future:

I'll post better photos and instructions in my Origamic Chemistry section

DVD versions of the instructions will be released

Another project that I might pick up on again is the Origami DNA Project that I stalled out on last year. It'll be fun to start working on that again, and this time around, I'll be able to document the process.

While I don't have any set timetable for putting all this together, I have already started playing around with it and I'm very excited about the initial results. I will post more here and on DofTNet as these projects progress.

New Instructions... Finally!

2006-03-16T23:02:40Z

I'm very pleased to announce that I have completed the first edition of a new set of instructions. I have been making origami models of molecules for a few years now, and several people have asked me how I did it. Finally, after months of planning and procrastination and interruptions due to employment and other distractions, I have managed to take a set of photos and write some descriptions. I present to you...

Origamic Chemistry

The instructions include how to make the sonobe variation used to make the atoms, how to make and attach the modules for single bonds, how to make and attach the modules for double bonds, and how to put together some simple molecules as examples. The single bond example is water, H₂O - two hydrogen atoms each single bonded to an oxygen. The double bond example is is carbon dioxide, CO₂ - two oxygen atoms each double bonded to a carbon. I will leave more complicated molecules, like the caffeine molecules I'm so fond of, as an exercise for visitors to figure out. Later revisions will include more interesting molecules.

This is the first go at this set of instructions so they're a little rough right now.. the photos were taken using a camera phone and are just awful, but in the absence of a better camera, these will have to do for now.

A long time coming...

2005-06-08T17:46:15Z

I haven't fallen off the face of the planet just yet.. I've been awfully busy with other aspects of life, mostly offline, and so I haven't had nearly enough time to pursue my online hobbies as well as my origami work. I suffer from the problem of having too many interests and since I got a full time job, I have the money to pursue most of my interests but lack the time to do so. It's the usual situation where a person can have either time or money but not both at any given time..

I have a few email messages I need to reply to so if you're one of those people who have been waiting for a reply for the last week or so, I'll get to your email shortly. While I'm at it, I'll try to squeeze some time in to do some origami work as well as some website updates soon.

A thought or two and a note about the fold of the week.

2004-12-08T09:34:47Z

I recently received a message from someone who wanted to tell me that the rose I feature on DofTNet saved his marriage. I have always been happy to answer questions when they come up but it's always nice to hear from someone who just wants to say thanks. It would be nice if it were as simple as that to save a relationship all the time. I have never really considered myself an origami master by any means and I'm certainly no expert on relationships, but I suspect that a good relationship, like learning a new origami model for the first time, takes time, effort, and patience. I leave that as something to think about the next time the urge to fold some roses for that special someone strikes.

It's pretty obvious that it has been a while since I have posted any updates - here or on DofTNet. The last couple of months have been awfully chaotic. Having a full time job on top of everything else has left me with a lot less time for many of the things that are important to me. I have suspended the fold of the week while I sort things out a bit. I hope to start new folds again in January. Call it one of my new years resolutions.

Until then, happy folding!

I was mostly dead all day

2004-10-16T04:15:18Z

Yesterday was an interesting day...

I'm still getting used to having a regular 8 to 5 schedule so when I was asked to show up at 6:30am... well it was fun trying to convince myself to kick myself out of bed, into the car, and onto the road an hour and a half earlier... fortunately I out before rush hour so even though I was up and on the road an hour earlier than usual (that is - half an hour later than I wanted to be) I still made it to work on time.

Now yesterday was no ordinary work day.. I met several of my new coworkers at the office and we drove to our local airport (we call it the Sunport) where we had volunteered to be victims for a little drill they do every three years. We went inside and signed in and then we were handed a paper that described what sort of injury we were to receive. Some people were given minor lacerations, other got burned, while still others had compound fractures and exposed bones. I had the good fortune of getting a basilar skull fracture which involved nothing more from me than to be unconscious all day. After finding out what injury we were to get, we were shuffled over to the makeup artists to actually get injured. I got bruises on my face and behind my ears (something apparently known as "Battle's sign") and blood coming from my ears. I apparently got the most severe injury out of any of my coworkers. On top of that, some of us were told that while on the flight, we had the chicken dinner which was laced with ricin. lucky us.

After milling around a bit while waiting for the other volunteers to get their injuries applied, we were herded out to a couple of buses. On the way, someone asked me what my injury was so I showed her my sheet. She commented that she had seen me walk by and noticed my battle's sign and thought "that guy's toast!" to which I couldn't help but reply "you have no idea!".

The buses hauled us onto the runway where the airplane was waiting for us. I found a nice place behind the plane.. right smack in the middle of the runway.. and promptly took a nap since I was supposed to be unconscious. It's just as well because I didn't get much sleep the night before so while my coworkers had got to cry uncontrollably or wander around disoriented, I got to catch up on sleep... in the middle of the runway at an international airport. Roll playing is easy when all I have to do is lie there.

So the firetrucks came and guys in hazmat suits showed up and rounded up all the people walking around and herded them out of the way, then rescued everyone who was awake but either unwilling or unable to get up on their own and took them to safety. Finally they started to take notice of me... poor little D of T sprawled out on the runway... finally they determined that I was, in fact, not quite dead yet! (insert monty python quote here) They finally flipped me onto a stretcher very carefully so that my head wouldn't fall off or something and managed to get me through triage fairly quickly since I wasn't quite dead... yet.

After I was through triage, I no longer had to roll play anymore so I wandered off to have a snack... except that because I managed to get through triage so quickly I became the subject of a bit of confusion because others who hadn't been processed yet were over there having their post-triage snacks... so I kept having to explain that I already made it through and was "at the hospital" already.

It was about that time that I realized that there was a good reason why they call our airport "the Sunport"... it seems I was starting to feel the effects of UV exposure. It seems I didn't think to bring my sunscreen because when I got to the office, it was dark... and my foresight got lost in the fog that was covering the city that morning. I've also got the curious habit of cutting the natural sunscreen off of my scalp on a regular basis so the top of my head is just as burned as my face. It kinda hurts but on the other hand nobody will be able to tell if I'm blushing for a few days.

After everyone was triaged and we were all having our snacks and stuff, we were loaded back onto busses to be hauled over to our respective hospitals for treatment. I got to go to the hospital at the university here.. and when we got there, apparently they weren't really into the whole role playing thing since they went about it very half heartedly.. several of us were hauled into a room where we awaited further treatment... and then 15 minutes later someone came walking by and noticed us "oh! you're still here? come eat, you've all been declared dead." and then showed us to a break room where we found the rest of the volunteer victims that came with were already enjoying their lunch. It seems they were miraculously cured.

I'm NEVER going to that hospital again. Even if I suffer from an actual severe injury. The way I see it, if they're not going to take the drill seriously, I have good reason to be afraid of them if I should happen to need the services of a hospital for real at some point.

Back on the bus and back to the airport where we waited for a couple of hours for the rest of our coworkers to return during which time I continued to nap. The other hospitals actually took the drill seriously and so it took them a lot longer because they were actually treating people for their fake injuries. We exchanged stories of our injuries and went back to the office and talked about to the rest of us who didn't volunteer.

In all, it was an interesting day and it's good to know that they do this sort of exercise periodically. Hopefully this sort of thing will never actually happen but if it does, I know they'll be better prepared to handle it.

Fold of the Week

2004-10-12T04:34:34Z

This week, it's caffeine! People have told me that I should be in a 12 step program for caffeine addiction.. my understanding is that step 1 is to admit I have a problem. While I'm more than willing to admit that I'm a caffeine addict, I refuse to admit that it's a problem. Besides.. I have this great book: The Caffeine Advantage!

Fold of the Week

2004-10-04T02:43:10Z

It's October again and that means it's time for the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta where hundreds of hot air balloons from around the world gather here for a week of spectacular displays. Because of that, I actually wanted to fold something resembling a hot air balloon for this week... unfortunately I've been busy getting ready to start a new job and working on other projects so I haven't been able to devote as much time to origami as I'd like to.

Instead, I present Five Intersecting Tetrahedra as discussed in the Origami Club community. I gave it another try and it turned out quite well. My first attempt was thwarted by my paper cutter who disagreed with me as to where my fingers ought to be while I'm cutting paper up. We've since come to a mutual understanding and work together much better now. My fingers even grew back.

Fold of the Week

2004-09-27T12:47:49Z

The job interview that I mentioned the other day worked out well, it seems. In the last week I have filled out various papers and I am expected to show up next monday.

To celebrate the new job, this week's Fold of the Week was inspired by the name of the company that I am now working for.

Also, I am still looking for people who would like to have their own folds featured as a future Fold of the Week. If anyone is interested, leave a comment here or send me a note via the feedback from at DofTNet.

Fold of the Week

2004-09-20T11:51:58Z

I've got this week's Fold of the Week posted. I was simply too busy last week to squeeze one in.

This week, guest folder ronyu has folded a Kawasaki rose and attached a base and stem of his own design. Instructions for the rose can be found at DofTNet. The base and stem instructions can be found at Ron Yu's site.

Fold of the Week

2004-09-13T23:32:04Z

I mentioned this several days ago in this post in the origami_club community...

I've been fairly overworked the last week or so and haven't had time to think about folding something for this week. I'll still be working on something for this week and I'm still looking for people who would like their work featured on the Fold of the week for the next few weeks.

Anyone who is interested in having their work featured as a fold of the week can contact me through the feedback page to make arrangements. I usually post a 1280x960 photo (and thumbnail images), the name of the designer, a description of the model, and information on where the instructions (if any) can be found. Guest folders will also get full credit and a link to their website in the description as well.

Thanks!

An Interesting Interview

2004-09-02T06:31:07Z

I went to a job interview today. This wasn't a job I applied for but I do appreciate the opportunity. It was, near as I can tell, set up because someone who works there - the husband of the sister of the wife of one of my friends (did you follow all that?) - mentioned to my friend that they were hiring and my friend told them to talk to me. Turns out that the sister of another friend also works there. Small world.

So I went in and talked to a handful of people there who asked me all sorts of questions that related to the kind of work they do there. The work they do is software. It seems to me that while I have some understanding of the concepts behind object oriented programming, I don't know the terminology so some of the things that I was asked went right over my head. My understanding is that it is an entry level position so the fact that I'm not very familiar with the terminology isn't so bad, plus I'm always willing to learn (even by taking classes on my own dime) which probably helps too.

The took me down to talk to their Chief Scientist and we talked about a few things relating to the job. While talking, I noticed an interesting structure perched on the top of a book case. Mathematics and geometry have always fascinated me and it's part of what got me started in with the modular origami so obviously something like that would attract my attention. I mentioned the structure and said something about how it would be fun to recreate it in origami. We then got into a fairly long discussion about what it was, about packing structures in n-dimensional space, and some of the math involved in that. The structure was essentially a set of packed truncated octahedrons. He said that I was the first person in some number of years to know what that particular polyhedron is called.

Now this is something that I knew almost instinctively since it manifests itself in nature: A hexagon is the most round polygon that can be packed with no gaps in a 2 dimensional space. You can see this when you look at things like honeycomb. What I didn't know - and it makes sense now that I think about it - was that the truncated octahedron is the 3 dimensional counterpart. That is to say that a truncated octahedron is the most spherical polyhedron that can be packed with no gaps in a 3 dimensional space. There are, of course, similar counterparts in spaces with 4, 5, 6, and more dimensions as well but that's a little more than I feel like wrapping my brain around right now.

Anyway the whole point is that I now have another origami project that I can work on.

Oh yeah.. I also feel like the interview went well and I enjoyed talking to everyone there.

Fold of the Week - Late again!

2004-08-31T20:55:13Z

I have posted this weeks Fold of the Week late... I was away for the weekend visiting my brother and meeting friends and was entirely too exhausted when I got back to do ANYTHING including decide what to fold for the week. I was also too busy yesterday to work on it either.. work work work, it's all I ever do.

I slept on it a while and took some time to think it over and decided I wanted to fold an icosahedron or something, but I still wanted to play with more flower designs. It seems I found the best of both worlds in the cherry blossom ball. If you look at the blossoms, it's a dodecahedron (12 sides) but if you look at the holes, it *is* an icosahedron (20 sides). It turned out well in any case.

In other news, I went after a website that had copied all the photos and most of the descriptions for the Kawasaki Rose instructions featured on DofTNet. I don't mind if people want to share my instructions but when they post the photos and stuff on their own website as if it was their own work without even so much as a link or a thank you or anything.. well that's a little irritating. and this is the third time this site has done this. The owner has removed the pages without a fuss and I appreciate the cooperation. Next time use a link or ask first!

I have resisted doing this, but...

2004-08-25T14:38:14Z

Well here I am.. I've finally given in and set up a LiveJournal account. I do not currently plan to update this very often, but it's here in case I feel compelled to. I've mostly done this on account of the origami_club community and the people therein who have been kind enough to plug my website. Thank you for the support!